Celebrating good outcomes

Karen McCowan

Thursday

Apr 15, 2010 at 12:01 AM

A decade ago, the future looked dim for Chrystal Carreras, then 15.

She’d started using drugs at 11, graduating from pot to methamphetamine by 14.

“I didn’t get along with my mom, so I was out on the streets even before I started using meth,” Carreras recalled this week. “I was homeless, in and out of jail. I really believe I would have ended up in a really bad place by now — probably in prison or dead — if it hadn’t been for RAP Court.”

Instead, Carreras was one of the first young offenders picked in 2000 to participate in the Recovery and Progress Court at the Lane County Juvenile Justice Center. She was back at the court on Wednesday — helping to celebrate its 10th anniversary milestone.

The court was launched by Lane County’s Juvenile Court Judge Kip Leonard, former youth services director Steve Carmichael, juvenile public defender Peter Warburg and others to address the underlying substance abuse problems of many young offenders.

It was Oregon’s first juvenile version of adult “drug courts” that have proven effective in helping addicts end substance abuse and other criminal behavior by addressing their underlying issues.

RAP Court now serves about 40 to 50 juveniles a month. It provides participants with intensive monitoring and treatment, with family and individual counseling, and with weekly judicial scrutiny.

Together, court workers and family members identify and build up each youth’s strengths, reward their progress and to hold them accountable when they stumble.

A big reward awaits those who hang in there and succeed — about 75 percent of his clients, Warburg estimates. Part of each teen’s graduation from RAP Court includes the opportunity to literally shred their juvenile rap sheet — allowing them to enter the adult world without a criminal record.

Inside Courtroom 2 of the Lane County Juvenile Justice Center Wednesday afternoon, dozens of current RAP Court participants and their families gathered for their weekly check-in with Leonard and other court staff.

The atmosphere is markedly informal.

“How you guys doin’?” the judge greeted the teens.

“Good! How are you?” they called back.

After some informalities — including a trivia quiz in which Leonard rewards correct answers with dollar bills — the group got down to business. A boy came up to a table near the judge, joined by his mother and his grandmother as well as his defense attorney, Warburg, and his probation officer.

He began by announcing that he’d been clean and sober since Jan. 2.

He read aloud an essay, drafted in his own words, about the importance of honesty. In keeping with the unique court’s “strength-based” philosophy, he then listed five positive attributes about himself since his last RAP Court appearance. Among them: attending high school every day, avoiding contact with old, drug-using friends, even not fighting with his family over what TV channel to watch.

When Leonard asked the youth’s mother for her assessment, she was almost exuberant.

“I am very proud of him,” she said. “For the first time, he got all passing grades this term.”

Leonard wasted no time affirming the latter accomplishment.

“That’s important, because he is such a bright guy,” the judge said. “He’s very inquisitive.”

Before the session ended, an unexpected sound filled the courtroom as everyone present joined in singing “Happy Birthday” to one of the RAP Court kids.

Afterward, the current program participants spilled out into a hall for a different kind of birthday celebration. They joined a spill-over crowd of program alumni, their families, former RAP Court workers and partner agency representatives in a ceremony marking the court’s 10th anniversary.

Among the alums was Carreras.

One of the program’s first graduates, she’s now a 25-year-old mother and a student in Lane Community College’s human and family services program. She’s completing an internship with a state child protective services caseworker. And she plans to transfer to the University of Oregon and earn a bachelor’s degree in preparation for a career as a child welfare worker.

She recently contacted Leonard, saying she wanted to give back to RAP Court by volunteering as a mentor to other young people battling addiction.

In a brief speech Wednesday, she told current participants not to give up even if they sometimes stumble. She certainly did, she told them.

After living on the streets with no rules, life was not easy after she was ordered by the court to live with her grandmother, Jeanne Wylde, and Wylde’s partner, Phyllis Parks.

“I struggled and she struggled, but they kept me on track,” Carreras said. “They’re my rock.”

She also initially resisted cooperating with Leonard, seeing the judge only as an oppressive authority figure, Carreras said in an earlier interview.

“I was pretty rebellious and hard-headed — I took off running out of the courtroom one time, because I didn’t want him to put me back in detention,” she recalled, laughing.

In time, however, she came to believe that he cared about her.

“He was always interacting with us outside of court,” she said, recalling the judge playing softball with RAP Court participants.

Carreras also credits her probation officer, Pam Paschke, with never giving up on her.

“The main thing I got out of RAP Court was what it felt like to be clean and sober,” she said. “Once you start down the path of destruction, you can’t remember what it was like before you started using.”

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